


It's No Surprise To Me

by arandomshipper (Giveadogabone)



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Because time travel, Canon Compliant, F/F, Headcanon, Reinvented character origins, Self-Hatred, kinda sorta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 21:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14702796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giveadogabone/pseuds/arandomshipper
Summary: Homura learns firsthand the truth of a particular song by Lit. For her, there's nothing metaphorical about it. The battle for her soul is on. In one corner, Akemi Homura. In the other...Akemi Homura. Who will win? Madoka, of course!





	1. Please Tell Me Why (I Came In Through The Window)

Homura was thrown violently to the ground for what may have been the thousandth time. The pain in her 'body' was nothing compared to the pure agony in the deepest parts of her being as her soul gem was corrupted far past the capability of any grief seed to heal. She made no attempt to get up this time.

She rarely reached this point. Most timelines, she never got to take a shot at fighting this monster, the ultimate witch. There were too many other things that could go wrong first. When she actually managed to get here, those were the moments of greatest risk and greatest reward. Everything she'd been attempting to achieve was within reach if she could just win one last fight. But if she lost...each and every time she lost and escaped with her soul gem intact felt like a miracle, luckier than winning the lottery ten times in a row. It seemed her luck had finally run out.

Despair was the doom of every Puella Magi. Homura had escaped its insidious grasp thus far due to her unique power, knowing that no matter what horrible things happen, she could erase it all and try again, rinse and repeat as many times as it took to get it right, as long as she survived. That nearly indestructable hope made her the most powerful magical girl in existence. An ordinary witch, even ten or twenty ordinary witches, posed no threat to her.

Walpurgisnacht was no ordinary witch.

It wasn't enough that the monstrosity was nearly invulnerable, shrugging off her strongest attacks like a bull blowing a gnat out of its face. It wasn't enough that it could in turn obliterate her with the least of its own attacks. If that were all, Homura would never doubt her eventual victory.

The problem was that it was intelligent in a way that no witch should ever be. It could think, anticipate, strategize. Regardless of her time stopping power, it was ten steps ahead of her at every turn. She hadn't known it until this timeline, but she came to realize over the course of the fight that this wasn't a fight at all. This was a child pushing its food around the plate out of boredom. This was a cat knocking a helpless mouse from paw to paw. This was a tiger twitching its tail, just waiting for the lone, sickly zebra to make the first move.

It was toying with her.

Once she understood that, despair was inevitable. The ending where she managed to slay the beast and rescue the damsel couldn't be found no matter how many retries she got, because it didn't exist. Death was inevitable.

It did, however, raise one last question, which Homura considered as her soul gem made the last few swirls from purple to black. Why? Witches didn't play with magical girls. They executed them at the first opportunity. Even if this one was freakishly intelligent, what could it possibly gain from torturing her like this?

Realization hit her, the final blow on her degrading psyche. It knew. It understood the relationship between Puella Magi and witches, in a way that other witches didn't have the sentience to comprehend.

It didn't want to kill her. She was lying on the ground, helpless and defeated. The fight, if a fight ever it was, was over. The was only one reason left not to finish her off.

It wanted her to turn.

Homura had nothing left to live for, so the possibility of dying didn't bother her. In this particular timeline she'd managed to prevent Madoka from contracting, but she couldn't get her out of the city. Walpugisnacht would kill her last reason for living after destroying her. There was only one possible fate worse than that. If she became a witch and killed Madoka herself. The last shred of self left in her would do anything to prevent that.

She was turning. Too late to change that. Only one thing she could think of to eliminate that hideous circumstance from being a possibility.

There was an advantage in having crossed the line of no return. A Puella Magi could never unleash her full power with the threat of destroying herself hanging over her, but now Homura had that option. Summoning every ounce of power within herself, reaching into depths she had never dared touch, she exceeded her limitations with the most powerful spell ever cast. No matter the cost, Madoka would be safe from her own hand at least. Her specialty, time magic, would make it so. She flung her doomed existence back in time.

She just had to go back far enough her witch never encountered Madoka. As far as she knew, a witch would never die of old age. It had to be killed by a magical girl. She was buying time for the magical girls of the world to kill her before Madoka was born. How far was far enough? Fifty years? No. Too risky. One hundred? Still no. She needed certainty. A thousand? Closer. Two. Three. Five. Ten. She kept going, past the birth of Mankind, past the dinosaurs, as far as she could, as far as her strength could take her.

When her body finally came to a rest from its trip through time, she lay on a barren earth, the only living thing, if living she was, on the planet.

And then the recoil hit her.

Pain beyond pain, beyond imagination. It didn't come in waves, it was one extended neverending experience, dwarfing her ability to endure, or even comprehend and experience. And it wasn't tied to her body, it was her soul going through an ordeal so much worse than destruction. There was nothing worth this. Not love, not beauty, not Madoka herself was worth this. Her soul was twisted and transformed into something new, something that defied explanation and reason, something beyond the ken of the incubators, whose inane meddling had inadvertently caused this turn of events.

The pain lasted a mere moment, a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, but it did end, and when it ended, the thing that was left knew things that no other being in existence knew, things the incubators thought they knew, things that other witches would know if they had anything like a mind left within them, but they did not, so knowledge was reserved for one alone.

The incubators thought that witches were beings of despair, that Puella Magi and witches, the relationship between them, the transformation process and the energy generated by it, was about the balance of hope and despair. It was not. That's the kind of misconception that could only come from a species incapable of emotion.

That a witch was formed when despair overwhelmed a Puella Magi, that was true enough. Despair is truly destructive, capable of utterly consuming a being. What the rat species did not realize is that despair is self-contained. It spreads like cancer, eating away at a single being until nothing is left but an empty husk and even the despair itself is consumed, not like a virus, jumping from one host to another, ever living and always getting stronger. Despair is stagnant. It has no power to move, to motivate. There is no energy to be gained from it. Despair is what destroys a magical girl, but it is gone once it does. The thing that is left feels none. A witch is not a being composed of despair.

The thing that was once Akemi Homura used the final moments in its old body to grin, a grin that would leave Sadako screaming in terror and running for whatever passed for her life, as it was filled to overflowing with the true essence of every witch, the only thing a witch is capable of feeling, a feeling that Akemi Homura had ironically been all too familiar with. If any other being with auditory perception had been around, they would have heard a distorted singsong voice say, "Hello, darkness, my old friend..."

And then the old body exploded in a surge of power, leaving behind it a being formed entirely of one substance.

Hate.


	2. Can We Forget (I Didn't Mean To Call You That)

When the thing that was once Akemi Homura first awakened from the dormancy caused by its rebirth, it could hardly be said to be self-aware. The hatred contained within was mindless, directionless. It tore free of the pocket dimension it had instinctively created to sleep safely in and began laying waste to everything without discretion. It no longer had time powers, did not, in fact, have the ability to recall the being that used to have time powers at the moment, but it had virtually everything else. It tossed elemental power around like a toddler throwing a fit, fire, earth, wind, and ice, lots and lots of ice, scoring the planet with great swathes of destruction.

It finally came to itself, not because its rage and hate were satiated, but because they were not. Millions of living creatures, giant lizards and others, were dead or dying in agony the world over, but there was no satisfaction to be had. The monster beyond witches knew that the prey it desired was not here, and so it slipped back into the pocket dimension to go dormant once more.

When next it awakened, it was closer to true intelligence. The earth was now populated by humankind, creatures that sparked a purpose within the greatest of witches. These. These were the objects of hatred. These were what it so longed to destroy. This would bring satisfaction.

This time, it unleashed its power with more focus. Water. Nothing but water. Cover the whole earth. Drown them all. But as the water levels rose, some of the humans rose up to fight. No. Not humans. It remembered what these things were called. Little puppets masquerading as human girls. Puella magi. Hundreds of them came, every living magical girl on earth.

It wasn't enough. Not even close.

The thing that was once Akemi Homura reveled in the destruction. The joy it felt in crushing the magic, hopes, bodies of the Puella Magi exceeded even that of wiping the human race from the face of the earth. After the battle it went dormant once more, having filled the hatred it was composed of with the suffering of others.

The third time it awakened, it had a moment of panic as the memory of what it had done washed over it. The hatred, the hunger for others' suffering was still there, stronger than ever, but it had killed every human. What could satisfy it now?

But when it left its pocket dimension, humanity was back, more populous than ever. A quick investigation revealed that one little boat with the remnants of humanity in it had escaped its notice, and the survivors had not evidently had much trouble repopulating the earth.

The near-miss was sobering to the monster. Humanity was far too fun to torture to ever risk xenocide again. From now on, it would have to be more prudent with its destruction.

It never went fully dormant again after that, always keeping just a bit of attention on the human race to see when and where it could pop in and cause untold suffering, and crush a Puella Magi or ten each time. An erupting volcano here, a burning capitol city there. Earthquakes and floods and storms and meteor showers. Anything to make their lives miserable, unbearable.

It came up with more inventive tortures over time, getting bored with the 'natural' disasters and elemental magic. In one particular stroke of genius, it came up with a devastatingly deadly plague.

Each time it showed its nonsensical face, Puella Magi would appear to oppose it. They could sense it coming. It could have concealed its presence and acted unopposed, of course, but it treasured the interactions with the poor, stupid, deceived magical girls the most, so it did not. In fact, it did the opposite, telepathically broadcasting the intent to visit a place well in advance to draw a gathering of the idiotic little bugs.

However, the creature of pure hatred began to realize that for all the suffering that it inflicted on humanity, the humans themselves inflicted even more on one another, and they took it harder when they could see the intent. Other witches tapped into this without thought, inciting the worst of behaviors in the clueless humans around them out of pure instinct. The greatest of witches reasoned that it could accomplish even more with a little planning.

It began stirring up this and that. This leader in power here, that alliance there, and the whole world was ready to pop at the slightest provocation. With the groundwork laid, the creature traveled to Austria to ignite the bomb.

There it was met with a gathering of Puella Magi such as it had not seen in quite some time. The incubator looked on as always while his little dupes went to war.

Their chances of winning were zero.

The last one left alive had been the leader, a beautiful German with blonde ringlets, as strong a Magi as any it had come across. She was quite a bit older than usual, old enough to be a mother, and it showed in her mothering attitude toward the members of her impromptu army. For some reason, her very appearance was an irritant to the beast, engendering the desire to kill her last and torture her as long as possible. It spent hours playing with the foolish blonde woman, repeatedly giving hope and taking it away again, leaving openings and crushing attempts to exploit them, maximizing pain in a way that only the oldest creature on earth could conceive of.

As soul gem finally darkened beyond redemption and the monster debated whether to finish her off or let the rot take her, she whispered a word. "Walpurgisnacht."

The creature paused. It turned the word over in its mind. The sound of it stirred up something within it, a memory too faint to grasp.

Walpurgisnacht decided it liked the name.


	3. Every Now And Then I Kick The Living **** Out Of Me

That moment marked a distinct change in the being now known as Walpurgisnatch. She was no mere thing, she decided. She was a goddess. A personification of hatred. A Concept. No magic could threaten her. All the evil within all the beings in all the worlds could not hold a candle to her. Humanity was hers to toy with, for all eternity.

Except.

Over the course of the next several decades, she began to Remember.

Her existence was not yet concrete. The circumstances of her creation were not set in stone. She would have to take steps to ensure her survival, or she would be destroyed at the point of origin, as if she never existed at all.

Simple enough. She already knew what to do. Her pocket dimension was filled with shrill laughter the moment she realized that to secure her own existence, she only needed to do exactly what she wanted: Take the one person she hated most in existence, the one person she had ALWAYS hated most, and torture her beyond reason, break her, destroy her utterly until nothing but a shell remained, a shell to be filled with the very essence of evil.

A shell called Akemi Homura.

Easier said than done, of course. Walpurgisnatch knew above all others that Homura was a tough nut to crack. She could and would endure horrors hundreds of times worse than it took to break the strongest of men, and not even flinch. It would take more than a lifetime filled with nothing but grief, sorrow, helplessness, pain, loss, and isolation to break this girl. But that was fine, because Walpurgisnatch knew something that the not-yet-born Homura did not.

She had as many lifetimes as it would take.

Preparation had to begin before birth. As the time came close for Akemi Homura to be born into the world, Walpurgisnatch finally began concealing her presence for her next series of moves. She could not risk interference for this, the most delicate and essential of operations.

The first step was to attack the embryo. Weaken her DNA with genetic disorders that would leave her unable to function as a normal human, but leaving her with just enough physical capability to have a good taste of everything she was missing out on.

The second step was to attack the minds of the parents. True parental love would be a detriment to her plans, making Homura much harder to break. However, she could not be allowed to die from parental neglect, either. Walpurgisnatch took every bit of natural love for their child from the minds of the two, and replaced it with duty. She is your burden, she whispered into their minds. Your responsibility. Pay whatever it takes to get the most professional care possible, make sure she is in no danger of dying, and you are absolved. No need to pay any further attention to the little problem.

And the same for the parade of doctors and nurses caring for the little monster-to-be. Can't let any of them get too close and become friendly, or worse yet, loving to the girl, breaking the carefully crafted isolation that in itself would be enough to ruin the average person. Akemi Homura would learn from a very young age, and be taught again repeatedly, what it is to be truly alone in the world.

Step four was to restore a bit of her health and orchestrate a meeting with a very special someone, who would penetrate the isolation and show Homura what the pinnacle of goodness in humanity looked like, teaching her that the world is not all about pain and suffering, that happiness is achievable. Teaching her to have the one thing that is an absolute necessity to precede the full immersion of a heart into darkness. Teaching her Hope.

And then comes the fun part.

The problem with putting your hope in a person is that a person is fragile. A person can be destroyed. One who has no hope, or who places their hope in a Concept rather than a weak human, cannot be broken. But Homura placed all of her eggs in the Madoka basket. She couldn't do anything else, of course. This was the path Walpurgisnatch laid out for her. When Madoka was broken, so too would break Akemi Homura, and thus would the Witch of Witches be born. So simple. So easy. So satisfying. So...

A flash of disorientation. It was disconcerting, the first time, and a little panic-inducing, but Walpurgisnatch quickly calmed herself. It didn't matter, she remembered. It was enough that she could protect her mind from erasure each time, essentially jumping back with Homura.. She didn't need to try to prevent the time skips. In fact, they were necessary. Having all her greatest hopes demolished right in front of her in the most brutal fashion would not damage Homura enough for her purposes. She needed to do it over and over again.

Each time they met, Walpurgisnatch laughed louder, more piercingly. Homura believed she was making progress, at the least learning one more way not to fail with each rewind, but she was just a tool of the Concept of Hate, just like everyone and everything else. The only thing her struggle was succeeding in was granting Walpurgisnatch more joy and satisfaction with every bit of suffering she was able to inflict on her former self.

And then it was the end. The final rotation. This was the timeline where Walpurgisnatch would finally secure her position in eternity, an unassailable, indestructible existence. There was some regret in knowing that there would never again be an opportunity to toy with the one she loved torturing the most, the creature in the multiverse she hated above all others, with every fiber of her being. She took solace in knowing that Homura was about to discover a different torture, on a level that even Walpurgisnatch herself had been unable to reproduce ever since.

The battle was laughably easy, and so the witch laughed throughout, knocking the helpless Magi about and soaking up her pain like Ambrosia. The way she expected her little time tricks to work, the shock on her face when Walpurgisnatch would attack the spot she knew the girl would appear, was delicious. She had nothing in her pitiful arsenal that had the slightest chance of piercing the hide of a creature as old as time itself. It was over before it started. And then she just had to wait. Wait for recognition to take hold. For despair to consume. For fear to work its magic. For the spell to be cast.

But just as Homura cast that fateful, logic-defying spell, somewhere, SomeWhen, there was another surge of magic of equal or perhaps even greater power, and Walpurgisnatch, for the first time since her rebirth, felt something that was neither hatred nor some other emotion that came only as a result of indulging hatred: Fear. She was afraid. Terrified. Something out there, something unbelievable powerful, was threatening her existence.

The remnants of her time magic allowed her to sense the time stream and the ripples caused by time travel. She knew where and when this threat was manifesting, and she acted immediately, without thought, attaching herself to her old self's spell, pulling herself backward through time with sheer force of will.

She arrived at the dawn of time once more, and there was her old body, lying helpless on the ground, her soul gem darker than black, about to be hit with the backlash of her recklessness. And she sensed the moment time froze, as Something appeared from the ether to take an action that would put an end to the existence known as Walpurgisnatch.

No. It would not be. Walpurgisnach tore her way into the frozen moment, a pocket dimension not unlike the ones she created for herself, and viciously attacked the Thing she found there with no warning, throwing every bit of power she had at it.

The Thing, a figure like a human girl except with too much white and too much pink and too many wings, squeaked in surprise and tried to block the attack, but lack of anticipation was her undoing. Walpurgisnatch could sense its power. In a straight up fight, this thing could kill her easily. But it was clearly not made for defense. Without preparation, its shields were lacking, and the blitzkrieg first attack managed to penetrate, dealing significant damage.

The Thing tried to retaliate, but the attack lacked resolve. Walpurgisnatch sucked in knowledge of the Thing with her second attack, and everything made sense. The Concept of Hope. Well, wasn't that funny. No wonder her attack did not have the killing intent behind it. She was created to save, not to destroy, and she was finding it difficult to handle a monster of a variety she was never meant to encounter. Walpurgisnatch could not be saved. The only thing that could damage it was a destructive attack on the level of a star killer, and while the Concept of Hope had the power, ironically, it didn't have the mentality for it. Walpurgisnatch could win. She could beat this opposing goddess as the final obstacle to eternity.

Blow after blow, the Witch continued her assault. It may have been fruitless against a being of so much more power, but the damage of that critical first surprise strike was key, leaving Hope vulnerable to the barrage that followed. Walpurgisnatch had eons to perfect skill in every magical discipline, this upstart goddess had been around a few days at most. She would not be eclipsed. The angelic being cried out in pain, struck repeatedly in more ways, from more directions than it could deal with, unwilling to strike a killing blow that would end the fight in its favor. Walpurgisnatch laughed in triumph, sneaking in a Gravity attack that slammed her foe to the earth with the force of colliding planets. It was too much. The goddess's defenses fell, her consciousness faded, and she was just one more magical girl to finish off, helpless prey for Walpurgisnatch to devour, just like all the rest.

But the killing blow did not land. It was stopped by a black shield that covered the goddess at the last possible second, appearing and disappearing the next instant with Hope locked inside, bearing it to parts unknown.

"Hello, darkness, my old friend..." Walpurgisnatch heard a voice sing. She knew that voice. She KNEW that voice. She HATED that voice. She spun her perception around wildly, looking for the impossibility, that most hated of existences.

She found it. A girl with long dark hair, wearing a revealing black dress and black stockings, enormous black wings draped across her back, sitting casually on a rock with one leg crossed over the other, looking at Walpurgisnatch like she was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

Walpurgisnatch screamed in fury and threw everything she had at the little devil, but she didn't even twitch or change expression. She crushed every attack without an eye flicker. And then she spoke again.

"We meet again...Homura. It's been a while, so you may have forgotten. Allow me to remind you." She stood and walked closer to Walpurgisnatch, tilting her head back to gaze up at the much larger creature. "That thing you just tried to break? That's mine. It belongs to me."

Her face suddenly twisted into a rictus of rage. Power compressed Walpurgisnatch from every side, from every angle, pressing in on her like a vise. She keened in pain.

"Don't. Touch. My. Things!"

With every word, the power compressed further, drawing another cry from the witch, forcing her to shrink own existence. The final word carried with it a much longer, drawn out pressure, not only shrinking Walpurgisnatch down but also transforming her appearance. She twisted and writhed, shrinking smaller and smaller, until she was the same size, same build, same person as the one in front of her. The only difference between the two was the Mitakihara school uniform Walpurgisnatch now wore, and her absent eyes. In their place were glowing red orbs.

Walpurgisnatch snarled and snapped, held firmly in place by her adversary's will. The Devil circled her with arms behind her back, eyeing her up and down. "Look at you. Failure. It's not difficult to be Akemi Homura, you know. There's really just one requirement." She shifted her power, raising Walpurgisnatch in the air and squeezing again. "You had one job! One! Protect Madoka! That's all it takes to be Akemi Homura! You didn't even have to succeed, you just had to try! But you couldn't even manage that?! WORTHLESS!"

She slammed the witch to the ground and stood over her, glowering. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself, huh? You can speak now. Speak quickly. You don't have much longer left in this world."

Walpurgisnatch hissed in defiance. "You trash. Sitting there judging me. You have no idea what I've gone through! I'm no weak, stupid Homura. I've been through things no Homura could take, and I've come out the other end! You couldn't have survived what I did-"

She was interrupted by laughter from the devil. She howled with laughter, bending over and holding her stomach, tears of mirth running down her face. "Oh! Oh, this is good! Tell me more! Tell me more, oh intelligent one, of how I could never understand your pain, of how you're stronger than me!"

When the chuckles died away, she ran a hand over the side of Walpurgisnatch's face almost lovingly, and crooned, "My silly, stupid Homura-chan. You haven't even realized what I am, have you? Shall I teach you? Shall I? It might be fun. What do you say?"

She did not wait for a reply. Walpurgisnatch felt the power restraining her fall away, but before she could muster her strength for another attack, the devil grabbed her physically with a hand around her neck and lifted her back into the air, where her mind was engulfed with a familiar pain beyond pain, a pain too great for any living being to bear, pain that she had blotted out from her memory to save her mind. Only this time, her millions of years of life had expanded her mind and thus her capacity for pain exponentially, allowing her to experience it in its fullness. She screamed the scream of the creature that longs for death and cannot find it, the power of her scream shaking the frozen world.

And through the pain, she heard the voice of the devil in her mind. _I am a half-witch. The only half-witch in the multiverse. Do you understand what that means? Do you get what I'm doing to you right now?_ Walpurgisnatch could only continue to scream and shake her head in denial. _I'm not creating this pain. All I'm doing is linking our minds together. I am forever trapped in the state of transformation. The pain that you experienced for one small moment is my daily life. And you DARE tell me I don't understand you?! I will endure this forever for Madoka's sake. Any Homura would. That's what it means to be Homura. And you? I don't know what you are or how you came to be, but I think I just decided not to end you after all._

"No, please! Kill me! PLEASE! MERCY!" Walpurgisnatch pleaded through her screams.

She laughed again. _Oh, my dear. You of all people should know that I have very little mercy for ANYONE, and none at all for myself. No, you'd best get used to this. We're going to be together for a very, very long time-_

"Homura-chan, stop! What are you doing? Let her go!"

The devil did not turn at the sound of Madoka's voice, but Walpurgisnatch saw a little involuntary twitch. "You stay out of this. This is between me and her." She said, but her words had no bite.

"I don't like the Homura-chan that bullies people." Madoka said, and this time Walpurgisnatch saw a full on flinch.

"But Madoka-" Devilmura whined, finally turning.

"Don't you 'but Madoka' me! You stop hurting her this instant!" Madoka stamped a foot in outrage.

"Madoka, be reasonable. Don't you know what she is? What she's done? She's responsible for more evil than any other being in history! How can you ask me to have mercy on her?"

"Because," Madoka said with a gentle smile, "I love her."

"Fine." The devil hurled the witch to the ground and sank to her former seated position, sulking.

Walpurgisnatch gasped in relief at the absence of pain. Madoka examined her carefully, not quite naive enough to expose herself to danger. "She's strong. Very resilient. What were you even doing to her, Homura-chan?"

The witch saw an opportunity to get revenge on her tormentor and opened her mouth to answer, but Devilmura squelched her voice with a hasty spell. _Don't you dare_! She hissed mentally. To Madoka, she said, "Nothing, really. I was just choking her to death. No big deal."

"You're lying." Madoka said with a sad smile. "She was screaming so awfully. I wish you didn't know spells like that, Homura-chan. And I wish you didn't use them."

"Yeah, well, you already used up your wish, and look where that got you." Devilmura spat bitterly.

"I'm sorry, Homura." Madoka put her arms around the ridged devil and rubbed her face into her chest. "I had to do it, you know I did, and I don't regret it, but I'm sorry that being the Hope of the world means I can't be your hope. I'm sorry."

Devilmura softened for a moment, but her face hardened again almost immediately. Walpurgisnatch could feel massive amounts of energy shifting around. "Sneaky, trying to free your Aspect while distracting me. But not sneaky enough. Back to confinement with you."

"No! I won't go! I still have too much to do, and you're going to go right back to torturing poor Witchymura-chan!" Madoka puffed her cheeks out in protest.

"You don't have a choice. Until the Balance shifts back to you, I'm still stronger...but I promise to release this freak of nature." Homura relented.

"But what about-"

"Goodbye, Madoka." Devilmura said firmly. The devil continued to hold a hand out toward where Madoka had been standing long after she faded from sight. "Be happy." She whispered.

Walpurgisnatch picked herself up off the ground and dusted herself off. "So, you're going to 'release' me, eh?"

"Yes. Just like Madoka would've. Except my way won't be quite as pleasant. Still far better than what you deserve."

"Mind if I ask a question first?"

"Shoot."

"If Madoka is the Concept of Hope, and I'm the Concept of Hate, what does that make you? What the **** are you?"

Devilmura smiled. "What am I? That's a tough question. Philosophers have been asking that for generations. I'm unpredictable. I'm complicated. I'm contradiction. I'm possessiveness and generosity. I'm confinement and freedom. I'm shyness and boldness. I'm doubt and certainty. I'm beautiful and ugly. I'm kind and cruel. I'm infinitely forgiving, and my grudges last for eternity. Everyone knows me, and no one understands me. In short," A massive bow appeared in her hands, with a pure white energy arrow aimed straight at Walpurgisnatch's core. "I am your worst enemy."


End file.
